Lifestyle

Sick Of Mass Shootings? Do Something

by Jennifer Rosen-Heinz
David Becker / Stringer / Getty Images

Sick of mass shootings?

THEN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

58 people confirmed dead, and 500 injured in latest massacre.

Let me tell you how this goes (sing along if you know the words):

Thoughts and prayers!

It will never get better!

After Sandy Hook, we lost any hope of changing anything.

Now is not the time to talk about guns

He was a lone wolf. No one could have known.

Changing gun laws won’t change anything.

Bad people will still get guns.

I’m too paralyzed to do anything.

You’ve given up? Because things haven’t worked up until now? How quaint. You’re totally accepting of living your life in fear and exasperation instead of actually trying to change things?

Get over yourself.

Tell me what you have actually done, other than post shit on Facebook about how upset you are, or ranted to friends, or felt defeated and fragile and hidden.

You haven’t even begun to fight. Get up and actually do something.

Survivors of gun violence aren’t discouraged. They’re angry. They know the cost of gun violence — to themselves, to their families, to our society. The 40 parents who lost children at Sandy Hook, whose lives were turned upside down, the ones whom you invoke in your theater of pain and sorrow? They founded Sandy Hook Promise to advocate and educate and try to make sure what happened to their kids doesn’t happen to yours. They did that for you.

They’re not the only ones. Former U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was injured in a mass shooting at a constituent meet and greet in 2011. After an extensive rehabilitation, what did she do? She founded Americans for Responsible Solutions.

Let that sink in. A woman who was SHOT IN THE HEAD can do something, but you can’t?

A group that I have joined — a non-partisan group called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America was founded by a mother of five from Indiana. She had her hands full. She had carpools and activities. She had five children! But she did something. And now her organization is the largest counterweight to the NRA in the country — made up of people just like you and me.

So, are we, as gun violence prevention advocates, disappointed? YES. We are in as much pain as the rest of you. But we are DOING SOMETHING. We know we can stop this, but as long as YOU buy the narrative that we cannot, YOU are holding us back.

So don’t stand back in awe. Don’t stay paralyzed in your pain. Do not accept the role of victim.

And most of all, if you decide to be there, paralyzed, don’t demotivate others by saying we’re done. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Quite respectfully, fuck that.

WE CAN DO SOMETHING. WE ARE DOING SOMETHING. Are you?

ARE

YOU?

Start NOW.

Join at Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America or text READY to 64433

Take action on current legislation: The SHARE Act would make it easy for felons and domestic abusers to buy gun silencers without a background check. Tell your member of Congress: Don’t gut our gun silencer safety laws. Text SILENCERS to 644-33.